


Did You Miss Me

by alyxpoe



Series: Snippets of Inspiration for Fanfic [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, Romance, Sherlock's Coat, Song fic, men kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-30
Updated: 2014-05-30
Packaged: 2018-01-27 15:42:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1715930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyxpoe/pseuds/alyxpoe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's cliche--a dark night and a grieving Doctor. Melodies and a second chance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Did You Miss Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lobstergirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lobstergirl/gifts).



> A gift for lobstergirl for always being there for me when I need to throw around some completely insane ideas. {I know you prefer Mystrade, but what the heck :D}  
> Thank you so much. 
> 
> I had a two-hour break at work today in between customers and I was listening to Pandora. This happened.

**_Did You Miss Me (While you were looking for yourself out there?)_ **

**_Introduction_ **

~~_P_ ~~ _ost-Reichenbach, John is not in a restaurant when Sherlock reappears, but rather in his office at the hospital where he is now working full-time. It is the last office in the corridor, at the back of the building. He is single, and alone and working hard to move past his sorrow.  
_

 

_It is dark outside, just after eleven PM. John is finishing up the last of that day's paperwork, and he's in no hurry because he detests going home. He's actually been considering staying overnight in one of the dorm rooms usually reserved for interns, but he is exhausted and is supposed to be on another shift at seven AM tomorrow morning._

_***_

 

John Watson, MD and formerly of Her Majesty's Army, knows full well that he should never try to complete paperwork when he is this tired. In the past five minutes, he's had to scribble over, initial and then rewrite the same paragraph three times. The trauma unit was packed today and though he's never subscribed to the 'full moon' theory of chaos in a hospital's A&E before, he is pretty close to just blaming all the blood and pain on the phases of the damn thing. He finally lays his pen down and admits that he needs to give up for a bit. Taking his glasses off of his face, he rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands and turns his black leather chair so that he can look out the window at the darkness beyond.

Well, as dark as this city can be late at night anyway. He opens his eyes and stares down at the road below as two panda cars chase each other, splitting the silence with their sirens. Right on their heels is a fire truck. John shakes his head. It must be bad. He knows it's wrong, but his only thought is not whether the people involved can make it to the hospital on time, but if Dr. Smith is going to make it in on time to deal with it. John doesn't think he can take one more broken bone or bullet wound tonight.

John leans back in his chair and rolls his shoulders, trying, but not succeeding in working the kinks out of the muscles.

“This is ridiculous,” he mutters. He wheels back over to the desk and stares blankly at the stack of files and loose papers. John sighs and thinks that if he gets back to it now, maybe in an hour he can actually grab some shut eye. He will just have to call down to the receptionist and let her know he will still be in the building...

There's an odd scraping sound behind the door. He stands up, palms flat on the desk and looks beneath it. No shadows means there is no one there, a little trick he learned a long time ago from Sherl...nope. Not going to think about that right now. It's the whole reason why he has worked himself into the state that he is in right now, and that's enough to be going on with. John knows if he lets himself slide slightly, he'll end up on his knees blubbering like a baby and never get any sleep, so he purses his lips and sets his mouth into a hard line. Work first, then sleep, then maybe some breakfast then more work.

He nods. Yes. That is the way it is going to be.

Fifteen minutes later, John is wearily trying to fight against the cement walls that his eyelids have become. He stamps his feet on the floor and shrugs out of his lab coat. He fidgets with his black-framed reading glasses.

“Music, maybe?” He thinks then that he's got to stop talking to himself, too, because it seems he has become his own version of the skull-friend that...

“Damn!” John curses as he reaches for the power button on his computer. He flicks it on and quickly points and clicks to his favorite music site. The haunting sound of a violin blasts through the speakers and for an instant, John stills, allowing his memory to go backwards in time to a similar melancholy melody that would waft up the stairs to his bedroom like the hazy smoke left behind from a fireworks display. Eerily beautiful, it calls out to him, the sound settling in his ears the way long, perfect fingers would settle on the back of his neck or run through his hair...softly. He sits up fast to find that it is his own fingers clutching the short hairs at the back of his neck.

“No!” He nibbles at his bottom lip and hurriedly fights that fantasy: that one that is part reality and part-reality-that-never-was, except for in his own mind. “No.” He has fought that particular disappointment entirely too many times in the past two years.

John flips through a couple of stations. He finally settles on one that he thinks will keep his mind awake long enough to finish the reports now lying all over his desk from where he shoved at them with both hands.

“No,” he says again, this time more gently.

John bends his head back towards his paperwork and tries hard to ignore the music, but sometimes the universe is not kind, _nor is it ever so lazy,_ he thinks, but God, doesn't that just hurt you right where it counts? John would swear on his father's grave that he could hear _that_ voice in the back of his mind. He reaches out to close the music site down but something in the lyrics of the song that is now playing makes him stop, makes him listen, and makes him think.

“ _She acts like summer and walks like rain  
Reminds me that there's a time to change...”_

 

Something in his poor, abused brain brings pictures of a tall, long-coated, wavy-haired man gazing down at him beneath a street light, his eyes a bright beacon into the darkness that had become John Watson's life. The smell of an impending storm surrounds them and the man himself is lit up as if by faerie fire, high on the tail end of his own brilliance and a closed case. John remembers every single instant that his whole life changed—ever single moment where he wished for a little bit _more_ , even while he chastised himself for not being grateful enough for what he had.

God, how he changed. The madman changed John's entire perspective on himself, on his life, hell, on _everything_. 

Just for a little while, John wishes deep down in his heart that burning intellect would have been turned onto him. Just a little bit. But, no, he's always been plain John Watson with his smile and warm jumpers, much too plain indeed for someone who burns—no, burned—so brightly.

 _Tell me, did you fall for a shooting star–_  
 _One without a permanent scar?_  
  
John fights back a sob by making a fist with the hand still holding his glasses and sinking his teeth into the back of it. He tries not to think about what a fool he's been, always afraid to push too hard, to move too quickly in a realm that the man himself shot down within their first forty-eight hours together.

_I'm afraid that she might think of me as plain ol' Jane  
Told a story about a man who was too afraid to fly so he never leave land _

He feels the tear roll down his face and is powerless to stop it this time. Partially angry and partially relieved that he can finally, finally open up and weep over this, John allows it, knowing that there is no one to be found on this side of the hospital except for himself. His shoulders heave and his body trembles beneath the force of his sobbing. Pity he couldn't do this at the funeral, of course, then everybody would talk...

 _Thump_.

There's another dull sound outside his door. It makes his chest hitch and the sobs pause. Again, John stands up and stares at the gap between the bottom of the door and the tile. Nothing. 

He feels a little better, cleaner, perhaps, than he did before. Lighter. John marvels at the capacity of the human body to work its way through all the stages of grief so quickly. John clicks off the website and powers the computer down but doesn't move from his seat, because he can recall the lyrics as vividly as if the music still played.

_But tell me, did the wind sweep you off your feet?_  
 _Did you finally get the chance to dance along the light of day_  
 _And head back to the Milky Way?_

“I'm sorry, Sherlock. I'm sorry that I teased you about astronomy, I didn't mean anything by it, but I was truly so very, very amazed that there was something 'scientific' that you couldn't be arsed to learn, I really was.” John whispers between his fingers where he has plastered his hands over his face.

 _Can you imagine no love, pride, deep-fried chicken?_  
 ** _Your best friend always sticking up for you even when I know you're wrong_**  
 _Can you imagine no first dance, freeze dried romance, five-hour phone conversation_?

 And that's it, isn't it? A song about lost chances, about _not_ telling your best friend how you feel about them...about letting them slip right out of your hands and right off the roof... 

_But tell me, did the wind sweep you off your feet?_

Dear lord, it did, didn't it? John finally stops fighting and drops his head to the desk, crossing his arms over the stack of papers and closes his eyes. Sleep will not come this night, but perhaps he can make himself useful—do something to get out of this funk. One last sob breaks from his chest as he sucks in a lungful of air and gains control of himself again. 

“It's over.” He determines aloud as he stands and adjusts his light green button-down. John squares his shoulders as he slips into his lab coat and gives into the compulsion to stand at parade rest, relaxing his knees and thighs as he does so, preparing himself for a battle that he will never again see. Ready, instead, to march down into a sea of injuries and ailments, John opens the door to his office and is completely blindsided by what his eyes are telling him, but his brain almost refuses to acknowledge. 

A fresh wave of misery highlighted in bright streamers of unrealistic hope washes over him. Another sob is ripped from his mouth as he stumbles and is caught by long, lean arms.

Wool-covered arms.

“Oh my God,” John says into the broad chest that is now heaving under his cheek. “Oh my God.”

“John,” his name spoken in a rumbling benediction above his head and John can't do anything except squeeze the all-too-thin waist of the man holding him. He can't even speak though there is some sort of nonsensical litany falling from his lips and he is shaking, trembling against a body that is trembling against him.

He looks up then, unsteady on his feet and fear in his eyes that _this_ , this is not real. What he sees in the green eyes overflowing with their own tears, then, takes him even more off-guard.

They had—no, have—they have never talked about it. Never named it. Never uttered a syllable about whatever it was between them that is so much bigger, so much brighter, so much _more_ than they've ever experienced...and if there would ever be a time to do so...that time is now. Words, now, words that have been weapons time and time again; words that have been the saving grace of those on both sides of heaven and hell; those words fail them right now.

And someone, one of them anyway...one of them raises himself on his toes and the other leans down, rounding his shoulders as only very tall people can do...and their lips meet somewhere on another planet in another galaxy in another world and it is everything and nothing, and nowhere on Earth that John Watson wants to be.

After the rush of the first, very long in coming, kiss, they pull apart. John stays on his toes and Sherlock, Sherlock stays curled over his doctor, his best friend, the man that he would die for—and in all seriousness, very nearly did. When they are both firmly rooted on the ground again, only then can they give voice to _this_.

“John. I'm so sorry...” Sherlock begins.

“Sherlock, you are alive....” John starts.

The words are meaningless drivel as they fall together again, two bodies against the press of overwhelming emotion they are not ready to discuss yet; two bodies held together by the forces of nature that refused to crush the embers of something greater in the bodies of these two great men.

Later, much later, they _will_ talk about it. John will be angry, then accepting and then feel really damn guilty about the anger when he gets the absolute truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth between his favorite consulting detective and said detective's well-meaning older sibling...for now, though, they are wrapped up in one another, bound by the lights burning around them and the passion that can finally be put to rights.

When at last they come up for air again, John refuses to let go. He melds himself against the frankly ridiculous coat and shoves his hands as far into the pockets of it as he is able and pulls the man closer, always closer. Sherlock reciprocates in a way John never expected, he folds John into his arms and holds him as if he were made of the most fragile blown glass.

_...Did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there?  
_

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Drops of Jupiter (C) Train


End file.
